Rebecca was a member of the Yorkshire Schools Exploring Society’s latest expedition to Kenya. They worked on field projects along the coast before camel trekking through the semi-desert areas of north Kenya.
I found going to Kenya on the Yorkshire schools an amazing experience and had so much fun. the first couple of days were spent in Nairobi whilst we got our bearings, equipment and any last minute food supplies ready for the trek. Here we also went to a giraffe sanctuary (which you will see pictures of) where we could feed and even kiss the giraffes. three Kenyan boys called Nigel, Wesley and Clement came from a nearby school and also joined us for the rest of the trip, your contribution to me will have also bought the equipment for the Kenyan boys in the form of sleeping bags and mosquito nets so thank you very much.
After Nairobi, we headed north toward rumurunti where the ranch we were staying on was. on the way up, we stopped at Thompson falls as well as the rift valley and were able to see the vast Africa bush below us which was incredible.
Once we arrived at the ranch, the first thing to do was set up camp which involved putting up the mosquito nets and camp beds which seemed to take hours at first but as the expedition continue we were all experts in assembling them. the next five says were spent in an around the ranch, we visited the local school twice, once where we made new wooden tables out of scrap wood that the school had. on the other visit, it was schools last day so we were able to raise the Kenyan flag before competing with the kids at football and volleyball which put us all to shame as they were so good. on the other three days we did some jobs on the ranch. one day we marked out a cattle ranch with large wooden sticks, not to mention we were in the African bush so we did encounter a herd of elephants. we also dug a trench for a new water pipe which took a lot of hard work as the ground was so dry and hard.
The next 8 days of the camel trek seemed to fly by. the usual day involved doing an hour night watch around the fire every night and then began at 5:00 in the morning when it was still dark so it was very difficult re-packing all our bags and dis-assembling our camp beds. I think that the best day of the camel trek was the last, in which we arose at 4:30 and scrambled up “pride rock” and watched the sunrise whilst eating breakfast, there was a 360 view of the African plain all around.
After leaving the ranch we moved to Samburu nation park where we spent two days on safari seeing loads of animals from impala, baboons, giraffe, zebra and even a leopard and lions in the very last half an hour.
Once returning back to Nairobi, we had the dubious task of cleaning all the equipment (pans that had become black from the fire) which took a lot of doing but we were all in high spirits and were sad to leave.
All I want to say is a massive thank you to YET and the opportunity of a life time you have enabled me to have and I hope I have managed to give you a bit of an insight into my journey and what we did.